Why Oh Why Did Jessica Chastain Say Yes To Mama

Jessica Chastain got nominated for approximately 400 awards for her amazing performance in Zero Dark Thirty.While people are still arguing over the ethics of the movie and what it’s implications are in terms of torture, no one will argue that Jessica Chastain didn’t do a great job portraying the incredibly hardcore Maya. And its not like this is her first time getting major accolades her for performance in a movie. It was just last year she got nominated for a supporting actress Academy Award for her role in The Help.

So why then did this amazing actress read the script for Guillermo del Toro’s Mamaand decide it was a good idea to take the role of angsty Annabel. It’s a weird movie and it’s a weird role and I’m not exactly sure what made her say yes to it. But let’s begin to dive into her role and maybe find a reason that she felt compelled to make this movie.

Spoilers are coming, like a lot of them. So stay away if you like suspense. Keep reading if you have no plans on spending any money to see this movie.

Or you’re still reading, grand! You’ve made the right choice!

Here’s the basic premise of the movie. A man kills his wife and his co-workers before fleeing town with his two young daughters. He drives erratically on a dangerous road full of curves and ice, as murderers are want to do when they’re trying to evade the police. Not surprisingly he crashes the car. Surprisingly everyone survives the crash completely unscathed. Physically. Obviously we’re in for some major emotional damage.

The family of three stumbles upon an abandoned cabin in the woods that’s chock full of 1970s furniture. Because they’ve never seen a horror movie in their lives, they go inside. Just as the father’s about to shoot his daughter (he l-o-v-e-s murdering people that are near and dear to his heart), a mysterious figure kills him. And then raises his daughters. It’s Mama. But not their Mama.

As we find out in the movie, she’s an insane woman who escaped an asylum in the late 1800s, killed her infant son and then proceeded to haunt a cabin full of time-period-inappropriate furniture. If they’re going to make the furniture old, why not make it 1800s old? Why purposefully go for a decade that never gets mentioned in the movie? Are we supposed to believe she killed off the Bradys? I don’t know.

Anyway, the murdering father’s brother spend a few years looking for his missing nieces. He finally finds them living like feral animals in the cabin where their father took them. Even though he lives in a small apartment with a woman (Jessica Chastain!) who doesn’t want children, let alone dangerous feral children, he brings them home.

She took it because: Before ‘Zero Dark Thirty’ became the IT movie of the year (morally execrable as the director is), Chastain was a working workhorse of an actor for the last fifteen years. Hopefully you take parts that are intriguing and interesting and compelling, but really — you take the parts that will pay some bills.

Also, don’t hate too much on “Mama”. Nicolaj Coster-Waldau is in it, too, and that’s reason enough for me to smile.

Jenni

It’s a classic House at the End of the Street move.

Irish Girl

With Nicolaj Coster-Waldau….:P

Jenni

Also with this

Irish Girl

LMAO

Michella

She took it because Guillermo del Toro is regarded as a master of his genre with many amazing films behind him.

Jenni

This wasn’t his finest piece of work. Just saying.

Irish Girl

Well, you KNOW the only reason they’re promo-ing the hell out of it now is because of Chastain’s Oscar nom/GG win. If she hadn’t won the Globe, and if ZDT wasn’t causing so much controversy, “Mama” would very quickly become a forgotten, unsupported art piece. Coster-Waldau (or his agent) has to be over the moon, or should be if he has any sense.

Jenni

Just like releasing House at the End of the Street right after Hunger Games. It’s the new thing. Find an up-and-coming actress and then wait until she’s getting lots of press before releasing the movie.

Irish Girl

Yup. That’s Hollywood. Squeeze the nickel till the buffalo poops.

http://www.facebook.com/Chellarossi Michella Rossi

I haven’t seen it yet, and that may be the case- not everything he does is amazing, but its likely that she did it because of his reputation. He’s not your average horror director, so she was probably banking on it being something different.

Jordan Hines

Jamie Lanniester will never have a normal sibling relationship

Irish Girl

I fear that poor Jaime may not have a normal relationship, full stop — sibling or otherwise. Cersei visited monstrous abuse on both her brothers.

http://twilightirruption.blogspot.com/ abbeysbooks

IDK. I guess you would have to ask her why. Have you read Paglia on Taylor Swift and Katy Perry yet? Jes askin.